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Well, this is progress, is it ... shaming inferiors? As opposed to making them better, and to want to be better.
This fairly screams selection bias in action. I have never done gymnastics -- but if I get to pick the students, I could be the greatest gymnastics coach who ever lived -- if you measure by my students. Of course there are always the great unwashed wannabes who simply don't get my unique gymnastics training methods or are unwilling to put in the massive dedication required to take benefit from them.

Less sarcastically, the 25% of people with natural faculties and the dedication to pursue almost any training, will almost certainly excel, no matter what. Saying that only a quarter get it, is saying that the method is a 75% failure in training. IOW, nothing really to crow about, since the selection bias is simply taking credit for a large component of natural variation, whatever its marginal merit beyond that, and it may well have some. More perversely, though, most people who have selection bias (e.g. -- "brilliant" stock pickers at the bottom of the market) have trouble even seeing it in the face of their manifest "success." it is two-way -- and those who benefit, may credit something that is simply an adjunct to their own dedicated observation and effort that has brought the improvement. "Stone Soup" is a large parable.

This, BTW, is why Saotome's and Ikeda's lack of concern and even advocacy of wider exposure of their students among varying forms of training is indicative of a deeper trust in the essential principles they have inculcated in their students, such that they need not concern themselves with exclusive credit for their student's accomplishments -- they brought them to understand what was already there, and with confidence to pursue it further.

The measure of training is taking people who are untrained, dead stop, or even badly trained and do something useful, explainable, and repeatable with them from there, that allows them to improve on themselves since that is what is ultimately required. Paragons under one's direction do not prove anything but the ability to pick good horses. Picking good horses does not demonstrate that one is a good trainer, even if one is. Taking the knackerman's nag and making a fair runner, now that's a real trainer.

Back to maxims, preserved wisdom is usually sounder, anyway:

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Aikido is distinguished as a martial community, IOW -- an army:.

An army marches only as fast as its slowest soldier.

Whatever training does not improve the slackest fatboy does not make the army run faster. SEAL's are better not because they are faster, stronger, and better trained, though they are fast, and strong and well-trained -- but because they are welded units, in which every member identifies almost completely with the other members.

The genius of Aikido takes that principle of totalizing identification and seeks to weld the defender and attacker into an indissoluble unit. It makes use of a physical principle called aiki, to do that, but like all physical principles, aiki can be used to other ends, as well.

The mountaineer's prowess is not in summitting first, but in summitting and returning with the whole expedition in tow. "Acceptable losses" is a would-be general's admission that he does not identify with the men he means to command, even at loss ratios well below 75% acceptable failures. That the consequences of the case in training are less severe does not change the nature of the martial problem in question.

Doctrines that tend to prompt divisions are antithetical to that singular genius of Aikido, regardless of their isolated technical merit. That there is very likely a good deal of technical merit to be had does not diminish the problem with the manner of its presentation and questionable assumptions of its approach as applied.

It appears that Dan has not learned there's more to being a leader and a teacher than possessing knowledge others are seeking. Erick has provided Dan with a great service in his analysis and feedback quoted above; Dan would do well to read and listen carefully to what is being offered in good faith.

I you can consider waza as simply kata AND you have a teacher that understands and can teach the depth of kata, then shomenuchi has value.

well, yes of course anything can have a value. I agree. Of course, one paradigm can be more effective than another, too.

What I cannot understand, and what keeps puzzling me is why, among the many paradigms that may have a teaching value for attaining the depths of a kata, we have decided to found our default training using the ideograms of a samurai who could not come to terms with the fact he was no longer entitled to wield a sword, while we refuse of taking into consideration making our main and major training based on punches and strikes instead, as they occur in our modern western fights.

Our fights are no longer mostly sword fights, but mostly fist fights.

I have nothing against demonstrating a kata on a shokomenuchi also, as an occasional variation.
My contention is that our default teaching programs should be based on punching attacks because that's what we could be called to act upon in the vast majority of "street" cases.

Letting shokomenuchis and telegraphed yokomenuchsi being our default paradigm rather than determined fast and fastly rechambered punching, seems to me like having turned priorities, with the unavoidable consequence that many pupils may found themselves instantly at odds when attenpting aikido against a modern western attack. Most of them seem utterly unaware of the difficulties that implies, and our videos of "tsuki vs aikido" completely conceal to their eyes and training experience how incredibly challenging it may be getting an hold of an arm against a frantic attacker who rechambers instantly and then rechambers and strikes over and over again, within half a second's timespan, all the while stepping back and forward spinning on himself to be sure he keeps facing us.

This seems something many aikidokas are completely unaware of.

The reason I insist so much is that after 36 official boxing matches, I know as a fact what a challenge a competent boxer can be if your goal is to seize one of his arms. It's not going to be easy game!!!

It appears that Dan has not learned there's more to being a leader and a teacher than possessing knowledge others are seeking. Erick has provided Dan with a great service in his analysis and feedback quoted above; Dan would do well to read and listen carefully to what is being offered in good faith.

Eric made an argument for an army. It is flawed logic and frankly amateurish. I have trained and trained with specialists from various branches who's goals are in fact to function outside normal parameters. They are the motivated elite. Eric made a case for the lowest common denominator reducing the whole.
Its the chief reason I do not want to lead the student body....ever. I would rather get to play with people who are already self selected and motivated. For the most part (recently I have made exceptions) the people I am teaching are mostly leaders in one form or another in your art already. As one shihan said..." this is like graduate school for teachers." I have my hands full already. They can take care of Eric's slacker soldiers bringing up the rear...it takes more time and there are too many things to fix that require quite a bit of one on one time...not my job.
I am helping from the top and middle ...down by focusing my efforts where they will do the most good..your teachers and some sefl selected motivated students.

The various comments here from students about money and marketing and leaders and lowest common denominators and such shows the mindset of the people posting. I am interested in the other people in the arts who have a different mindset and personal drives that I can recognize and can relate to.
Making yourself a leader by gaining abilities that others need is the first step in becoming a good one.
The other is by hanging around and fitting in an getting promoted (military as well)...I avoid them like the plague.
Dan

Hi Joe
It is not a matter of enhancing waza, by meditaton,breathing etc.
of course these things could help. There are solo excercies simliar to the chinese internal martial arts that build the ability to do applied aiki and aikido.Many hours and years of standing excercies with correct intent,creating multidimentional forces within oneself.This is just the beginning.My taiji teacher Wang Hai Jun did similar solo trainning for over ten years before working on application.I think you would have to write a book to explain this stuff in detail.

Eric made an argument for an army. It is flawed logic and frankly amateurish. I have trained and trained with specialists from various branches who's goals are in fact to function outside normal parameters. They are the motivated elite. Eric made a case for the lowest common denominator reducing the whole.
Its the chief reason I do not want to lead the student body....ever. I would rather get to play with people who are already self selected and motivated. For the most part (recently I have made exceptions) the people I am teaching are mostly leaders in one form or another in your art already. As one shihan said..." this is like graduate school for teachers." I have my hands full already. They can take care of Eric's slacker soldiers bringing up the rear...it takes more time and there are too many things to fix that require quite a bit of one on one time...not my job.
I am helping from the top and middle ...down by focusing my efforts where they will do the most good..your teachers and some sefl selected motivated students.

The various comments here from students about money and marketing and leaders and lowest common denominators and such shows the mindset of the people posting. I am interested in the other people in the arts who have a different mindset and personal drives that I can recognize and can relate to.
Making yourself a leader by gaining abilities that others need is the first step in becoming a good one.
The other is by hanging around and fitting in an getting promoted (military as well)...I avoid them like the plague.
Dan

Sounds reflexively dismissive and overly defensive. It's not all about content--process is also highly important at whichever level you want to lead at.

Sounds reflexively dismissive and overly defensive. It's not all about content--process is also highly important at whichever level you want to lead at.

Of course it would sound dismissive to you Rudy.
Defensive? What am I defending? I am explaining a model to you that quite frankly you are not displaying an interest (or an ability) to adequately grasp in order to debate it well.
That's okay
Dan

Eric made an argument for an army. It is flawed logic and frankly amateurish. I have trained and trained with specialists from various branches who's goals are in fact to function outside normal parameters. They are the motivated elite. Eric made a case for the lowest common denominator reducing the whole.

Does the Special Forces motto matter at all? "De Oppresso Liber" -- "To free the oppressed." Aikido is, and by explicit direction, meant to be a martial community that embraces an even wider martial AND non-martial community -- and in terms that speak to the highest aspirations of both East and West. Aikido is the application of aiki to make practical and martial use of turning the other cheek ... And aikido is meant to function in normal as well as abnormal parameters and to normalize certain responses to aggression, neither stopping the aggression nor yet running from it. It is something else.

Quote:

Dan Harden wrote:

They can take care of Eric's slacker soldiers bringing up the rear...it takes more time and there are too many things to fix that require quite a bit of one on one time...not my job.... I am interested in the other people in the arts who have a different mindset and personal drives that I can recognize and can relate to.
Making yourself a leader by gaining abilities that others need is the first step in becoming a good one.
Dan

Well, now we know. The choice is to become one, or, to try to be the one to become.

In any battle, individual or collective, forces or personal abilities are mustered in three levels, strongest, middling and weakest. You win battles not by beating strength with strength, because pure luck can dictate that outcome, and is a sure sign of poor strategy. You win by marshalling weakness and degrading strength.

You set your strongest on the middle, your weakest on his strong, and the middle on the weakest, and when you have done, his strength is degraded by your weakest, your middle and strong have beaten his weak and middle, and he is outnumbered better than two to one in conclusion. King Pyrrhus said, "Another such victory against the Romans will be the end of us." The measure of the battle is made by the willful limit of endurance of your weakest capability to his best strength, whose merely tactical victory was always assured.

Quote:

"He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Of course it would sound dismissive to you Rudy.
Defensive? What am I defending? I am explaining a model to you that quite frankly you are not displaying an interest (or an ability) to adequately grasp in order to debate it well.
That's okay
Dan

"You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

It might help you if you stop setting an expectation on me ...to lead, or assuming I am trying to. I don't want it and I never asked for it.
Your art has quite a few leaders already, good and bad. If you knew me...and I assure you that you don't, you would have heard me respectfully tell teachers over and over..."That's your job, not mine."
All that said, I think any dismissiveness diplayed was your own. And that, of a model you simply do not understand
Dan

Dan Harden wrote:
Eric made an argument for an army. It is flawed logic and frankly amateurish. I have trained and trained with specialists from various branches who's goals are in fact to function outside normal parameters. They are the motivated elite. Eric made a case for the lowest common denominator reducing the whole.

Does the Special Forces motto matter at all? "De Oppresso Liber" -- "To free the oppressed." Aikido is, and by explicit direction, meant to be a martial community that embraces an even wider martial AND non-martial community -- and in terms that speak to the highest aspirations of both East and West. Aikido is the application of aiki to make practical and martial use of turning the other cheek ... And aikido is meant to function in normal as well as abnormal parameters and to normalize certain responses to aggression, neither stopping the aggression nor yet running from it. It is something else.

Quote:

Quote:

Dan Harden wrote:
They can take care of Eric's slacker soldiers bringing up the rear...it takes more time and there are too many things to fix that require quite a bit of one on one time...not my job.... I am interested in the other people in the arts who have a different mindset and personal drives that I can recognize and can relate to.
Making yourself a leader by gaining abilities that others need is the first step in becoming a good one.
Dan

Well, now we know. The choice is to become one, or, to try to be the one to become.

In any battle, individual or collective, forces or personal abilities are mustered in three levels, strongest, middling and weakest. You win battles not by beating strength with strength, because pure luck can dictate that outcome, and is a sure sign of poor strategy. You win by marshalling weakness and degrading strength.

You set your strongest on the middle, your weakest on his strong, and the middle on the weakest, and when you have done, his strength is degraded by your weakest, your middle and strong have beaten his weak and middle, and he is outnumbered better than two to one in conclusion. King Pyrrhus said, "Another such victory against the Romans will be the end of us." The measure of the battle is made by the willful limit of endurance of your weakest capability to his best strength, whose merely tactical victory was always assured.

Quote:
"He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

I'll make you a deal Eric, when you can teach me to walk on water and feed the masses, I will consider mutliplying myself to help every single person in aikido like you suggest....
Sounds pretty ridiculous to me so far and... is above my paygrade.
At least I have a real plan that is working!

Quite frankly you are not being responsive in any meaningful way to my replies. Your comments show no focus or resolve and are all over the map...war...seriously...war? You are being contrary for the sake of being contrary. I think you are once again, chiming in to try and take a piece out of me over one thing or another it realy doesn't matter what, It's just a flavor of the day.

My model is a well thought out model. It is working for hundreds of teachers and students alike who continue to report good things and come back repeatedly. In your hands you will turn every good motivation and honest effort and the very real consistently positive reports into swill....simply because you just cannot stand it.
Good bye
Dan

This fairly screams selection bias in action...Saying that only a quarter get it, is saying that the method is a 75% failure in training. IOW, nothing really to crow about,

Well, firstly, this was saying that about a quarter would get it in a way that Dan considers good. I believe his bar is set pretty high compared to the standards of most. 75% of people won't get A's in many many college classes (particularly the ones with the higher standards). This doesn't mean they failed 75% of the time, does it? The "crowing" isn't over numbers. It's over quality. I believe Duke university's medical program boasts a 100% divorce rate for its medical students because of the demands placed on them to do "well." Depending on one's metric, this could be viewed as a failure or a success.
I think the most telling thing here can be found in the people who have a lot of experience already who find Dan's teaching radically helpfull. Do we all need to follow that path? Of course not. Where, for whatever reason, anyone finds it incongruent with their own training or views, they probably shouldn't do it. Dan's entitled to his opinions and, again, considering some of the folks who seem to agree with him, I think this lends considerable weight to what he says.
For those who don't like the delivery, there's still the ignore function.
Take care,
Matt

Your comments show no focus or resolve and are all over the map...war...seriously...war?

Yeah. Seriously. I did mine. You?

I take martial issues seriously -- and they extend far beyond, and far short of, hand-to-hand methods -- because human violence is a continuum, and the lessons at one scale apply on one way or another to all the others. And if you imagine otherwise, you are not serious. Aikido is meant to deal with them differently, not less effectively.

The premise of Aikido training focuses on that DIFFERENCE, since more effect can always be trivially leveraged by changing scale of the violence. Hand-knife-gun-bomb is the common and easily understood progression, which the principles of Aikido circumvent by use of aiki at scales before and after actual violence -- rather than escalate by use of aiki. That is the difference. Seeking to magnify the effect BEFORE magnifying the difference leads in the wrong direction.

Aikido is the application of aiki to make practical and martial use of turning the other cheek ... And aikido is meant to function in normal as well as abnormal parameters and to normalize certain responses to aggression, neither stopping the aggression nor yet running from it. It is something else.

and

Quote:

Erick Mead wrote:

...human violence is a continuum, and the lessons at one scale apply on one way or another to all the others... Aikido is meant to deal with them differently, not less effectively...

The premise of Aikido training focuses on that DIFFERENCE, since more effect can always be trivially leveraged by changing scale of the violence. Hand-knife-gun-bomb is the common and easily understood progression, which the principles of Aikido circumvent by use of aiki at scales before and after actual violence -- rather than escalate by use of aiki. That is the difference. Seeking to magnify the effect BEFORE magnifying the difference leads in the wrong direction.

Hi Erick -

While I can't claim to understand a lot of your technical postings as well as I would like,the two quotes above as go to the heart of Aikido training and are perfectly clear and understandable. I think the ideas expressed above are perfectly in tune with O Sensei's wish for Aikido.

What I cannot understand, and what keeps puzzling me is why, among the many paradigms that may have a teaching value for attaining the depths of a kata, we have decided to found our default training using the ideograms of a samurai who could not come to terms with the fact he was no longer entitled to wield a sword, while we refuse of taking into consideration making our main and major training based on punches and strikes instead, as they occur in our modern western fights.

Our fights are no longer mostly sword fights, but mostly fist fights.

My guess is that this has to do with the emphasis on certain principles of movement more than scenario preparation. After hearing a lot of talk against the "zombie stiff-arm attack" I was surprised to see Tomiki Sensei practicing with the exact same thing. Of course his was more "alive," I presume, than many or most who look similarly today. I believe these and other "unrealistic" methods are ways of teaching how to avoid things like using arm-strength to affect displacement.

Quote:

My contention is that our default teaching programs should be based on punching attacks because that's what we could be called to act upon in the vast majority of "street" cases. Letting shokomenuchis and telegraphed yokomenuchsi being our default paradigm rather than determined fast and fastly rechambered punching, seems to me like having turned priorities, with the unavoidable consequence that many pupils may found themselves instantly at odds when attenpting aikido against a modern western attack.

Aikido is a big group. I think for many schools the default training is to seek "martial" applicability first and foremost. For others it's to work on a more general sense of personal discipline. You can get a bit of both at either kind of place, but the emphases of the teacher and senior students will lend themselves to whatever particulars they happen to work on the most. I don't think simply changing to a more punch-oriented kata will improve physical effectiveness across the board.
Training is a juggling act: it's up to us to find our individual weaknesses and shift the balance between what things we're focusing on, moving from one area to the next, to the next, etc., coming back to those areas we already touched on and repeating. Over time we might be able to juggle more and more things, better and better, but to what degree and in what direction is somewhat for the individual to decide, I believe.

Quote:

The reason I insist so much is that after 36 official boxing matches, I know as a fact what a challenge a competent boxer can be if your goal is to seize one of his arms. It's not going to be easy game!!!

My understanding is that it's never the goal to seize an arm; it's always to seize the center. Sometimes you can do this through the arm, sometimes not.
How's your grappling game? Boxing isn't always the best training either, particularly with the rise of BJJ popularity. It depends on the goals of the individual along with the previous range of experience that individual has. To my mind, the art is a suggestion for patterns of training, the application rests almost entirely with the individual.

Quote:

Stan wrote:

I think if you loosen up and let go some of your complicated mumbo jumbo you will see things more clearly.

"Complicated" is a relative quality. You might say he needs a simple approach, he might say you need a more nuanced approach. At some point people need to either try to meet in the middle (I'm sure there would be argument over where exactly that is too) or stop interacting...unless of course they happen to like the banter, in which case they should enjoy themselves, hopefully being mindful of the others around them who might prefer something else from time to time. Most people don't seem to want to change how they communicate though. C'est la vie, non?

I'm assuming that if you're reading this your wee lad is content. And true what you say about our pill oriented society. I'll add the need for tests and test performance to what you've just written. Which tests, how often to test, how to go about this and what to test for are always debatable but in Go, whatever the curriculum has been, whatever your personal training methods and experience as a player, you will be given problems to solve which will test what you have learned, the teachers you have studied with (played against), and the ways you have been taught. The problems, at least up to the intermediate dan levels, have clear and efficient solutions. Beyond that kind of testing you play your own master, and you have competitive tournaments within your association and others--nowadays there are lots of opportunities for on-line tournament play as well. Beyond that you play against the best master who will play you. In this way the student makes progress, the art evolves, and each generation of players evolves to be a bit stronger than the previous one.
Best regards,
Rudy

Hi Rudy,
The lad is content...as much as can be said of a 2-year old, at any rate. I agree that testing is a crucial componant to any system of teaching. It's somewhat at the heart of the learning process. I don't play Go, but I do play chess so there are similarities between the two. Chess is usually broken into 3 portions: opening, middle game, and end game. The first and last portions are the most well-defined because the circumstances are the simplest. They're usually the first things a coach will cover, along with the most common axioms (e.g. knight on the rim, chances are dim). My chess coach in high school would test us by having us prove our understanding of end game mechanics: force mate using king and rook; advance pawn to queen along various columns (some are forceable draws, some aren't); etc. With the exception of end-game mechanics, the other two portions of play are more open to interpretation. Some people have a knack for turning a bad opening into something good because most people only study the "good" openings. Every now and then old lines will get revived because someone discovered something new...and you never know how it will work, until you test it on some level. I played the 3rd ranked player in the state (scholastic level of play) and should have won because I knew a rare counter to his favorite defense. I got over-excited and nervous and missed a rook early in the game. Another aspect of play I clearly needed to test.
I think a difficult aspect of testing has to do with the fact that we all have to start somewhere. Standardized testing falls short on this account because it neglects non-standard things. So testing should be a never-ending process of application under a variety of circumstances, ideally.
Anyhow, I'm probably rambling and using a lot to say very little...I enjoy talking about chess a little too much sometimes.
Take care,
Matt

Your point is well-taken, but Dan is clear in taking the "best and brightest" approach, and without concern for bringing the hinder part along, and so if it has benefit for the latter, we will not easily know it one way or the other. My premise is that the best mostly take care of themselves, regardless, and relative effectiveness of methods is best shown on the lower end. YMMV.

However, it also does not address anything regarding selection bias. If the quality of students resulting is the proposed measure (and this has been his clearly asserted measure for years), but the premise is to take the best 25% that one finds, the problem of the selection bias remains. It may be that the method in question is superior, but you cannot prove it by relative student performance where selection bias is plainly operating.

... a lot of talk against the "zombie stiff-arm attack"... I believe these and other "unrealistic" methods are ways of teaching how to avoid things like using arm-strength to affect displacement.

ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.

Quote:

Matthew Gano wrote:

I don't think simply changing to a more punch-oriented kata will improve physical effectiveness across the board.

And yet I wholeheartedly agree with Ushiro Sensei that unless Aikido is done with the same mechanics and intent as strikes -- it will not find its proper effectiveness.

Quote:

Matthew Gano wrote:

My understanding is that it's never the goal to seize an arm; it's always to seize the center. Sometimes you can do this through the arm, sometimes not. ...To my mind, the art is a suggestion for patterns of training, the application rests almost entirely with the individual.

Thank you Matthew, I read with great interest your answer. I am not sure what "to seize the center" means in practical terms, but that is entirely may fault due to my despicable lack of experience and understanding - something for which passion doesn't make up, unfortunately.

However rather than starting a new post, this one seems to me the best fitting post to ask a related question, already incorporated in the original one actually.

Choose whatever you deem should be the three or four most important aspects you should develop or work on, in order to improve combativeness in aikido - let's keep them physical. I know aikido doesn't "fight" or combat in the least - yet, let's try to be practical here: we need to educate a body.
We need to educate it to develop responses to strong physical contrast (say a very aggressive uke).

Now, imagine these qualities, in their "combative" version (let's imagine for a monent such a thing exsists or that such an expression may have some meaning after all), cannot be developed in a dojo. Let's say we are dealing with a poor guy in whose small town there aren't many options - 2 or 3 dojos and all very ki-aikido oriented or mostly stylish, say.

What training routine should he perform in solitude, what katas?
Or should he hang himself?

I assume that katas, this bedrock of many martial arts, correspond exactly to training in solitude exigencies, thus I argue that by wondering about katas, I am asking something that is not entirely baseless but that can find its allocation within some martial legacy.

Also, are there frugal training equipments that may be useful (dunno - ropes, weights, bags, bands)?

I was thinking, for instance, that a bag stuffed with weights (I was thinking of phonebooks) and a long strap by which it can be held to make it spin could perhaps have some training value - dunno how yet of course, but after all we have here a lively thread about new (or not so new) training ideas.

Hi Joe
It is not a matter of enhancing waza, by meditaton,breathing etc.
of course these things could help. There are solo excercies simliar to the chinese internal martial arts that build the ability to do applied aiki and aikido.Many hours and years of standing excercies with correct intent,creating multidimentional forces within oneself.This is just the beginning.My taiji teacher Wang Hai Jun did similar solo trainning for over ten years before working on application.I think you would have to write a book to explain this stuff in detail.

take care

stan

Dear Stan,
I am suggesting that the various methods I mentioned earlier can complement/supplement aikido.May I also add Makko Ho exercises to the list?The Indian practices of Yoga also have much to offer anyone doing any type of M/A. Cheers, Joe.

(Off-topic) That's a nice set of quotes about go. I was surprised to read that Bill Gates is a go player too.

(Off-off-topic):

Microsoft and Aikikai

Aug 12 2010

Eric Draken

They have one major thing in common!

As a Computer Science major we had to study the history of computers and software from all the way back when they used water machines to tell time. In that class we studied a young Bill Gates. He wrote MS-BASIC, a programming language/interpreter, which was written on punch tape and demonstrated at a Home Brew Club meeting in the late 70's. He was not the only one making BASIC interpreters at that time. Why was he so successful then?

His copy got stolen, copied many, many times, and as a result became the de facto standard version of BASIC. He tried hard to fight this piracy. However, as a result of the widespread copying, unexpectedly everyone wanted to be Bill Gates BASIC compatible. Now his is a household name.

When Aikido videos get into the wild and go viral on YouTube, it helps to spread the art and the unique style of that shihan. Doshu, Tissier, Endo and Saito are my favorite examples. Maybe they try hard to prevent piracy, maybe they feel C'est la vie. Either way, I know more about Tissier and Doshu than I know about any other shihan. I can safely say that Aikikai is the de facto standard of Aikido because of its widespread publications and the sheer number of practitioners who follow it and love it.

As a result, I want my Aikido to be Aikikai-compatible because then I belong to a brotherhood of like-minded people who all believe in more or less the same philosophy. Not only that, because I also want to know of a particular style (財団法人合気会のは), I can feel more connected to O-Sensei, Japan, and my Aikido heroes.

This is only possible because we live in the best era with free, universal access to a wealth of Aikido knowledge which brings together a global Aikido community. Isn't that wonderful?

It is a shame that some brilliant shihans don't want to be recorded, or only want to keep their videos private. They don't realize that they are dooming themselves to obscurity and their unique style and insights to oblivionů just like those other guys who wrote their versions of BASIC.

Update: 2010.08.11 -- This post is about the whole idea of shihans being recorded at their dojos, at embukai, at seminars, at expos, and for commercial DVDs. I firmly believe that those who do not share their Aikido in this digital world may have their unique style lost in time.

Thank you Matthew, I read with great interest your answer. I am not sure what "to seize the center" means in practical terms, but that is entirely may fault due to my despicable lack of experience and understanding - something for which passion doesn't make up, unfortunately.

However rather than starting a new post, this one seems to me the best fitting post to ask a related question, already incorporated in the original one actually.

Choose whatever you deem should be the three or four most important aspects you should develop or work on, in order to improve combativeness in aikido - let's keep them physical. I know aikido doesn't "fight" or combat in the least - yet, let's try to be practical here: we need to educate a body.
We need to educate it to develop responses to strong physical contrast (say a very aggressive uke).

Now, imagine these qualities, in their "combative" version (let's imagine for a monent such a thing exsists or that such an expression may have some meaning after all), cannot be developed in a dojo. Let's say we are dealing with a poor guy in whose small town there aren't many options - 2 or 3 dojos and all very ki-aikido oriented or mostly stylish, say.

What training routine should he perform in solitude, what katas?
Or should he hang himself?

I assume that katas, this bedrock of many martial arts, correspond exactly to training in solitude exigencies, thus I argue that by wondering about katas, I am asking something that is not entirely baseless but that can find its allocation within some martial legacy.

Also, are there frugal training equipments that may be useful (dunno - ropes, weights, bags, bands)?

I was thinking, for instance, that a bag stuffed with weights (I was thinking of phonebooks) and a long strap by which it can be held to make it spin could perhaps have some training value - dunno how yet of course, but after all we have here a lively thread about new (or not so new) training ideas.

I think it depends on what you are looking for.

I started training in kyokushin recently. I like aikido much more, but it is interesting to me to cross train a little. I think kyokushin is quite combative. Response time is very short, but responses are simpler too. And you get used to getting hit, so it builds up mental resilience against this. I don't think I could learn this type of combativeness with solo training at all.

What I can do with solo training is conditioning my body to improve coordination, stability, resilience, speed and power.

But you need partner training to learn how to use your body in a combative way, be it karate, boxing or aikido. Partner training narrows down which combative ways you learn to apply to an opponent/partner. That is the art you study.

Your point is well-taken, but Dan is clear in taking the "best and brightest" approach, and without concern for bringing the hinder part along, and so if it has benefit for the latter, we will not easily know it one way or the other. My premise is that the best mostly take care of themselves, regardless, and relative effectiveness of methods is best shown on the lower end. YMMV.

This is an issue in the education field relating to Advanced Placement classes. Many people feel that by taking the kids who, for whatever reason, already do better and giving them a discrete location, you punish those who don't do as well (for a variety of reasons). I think this argument plays out more readily in a public education setting where we are supposed to leave "no child" behind...the counter-argument often being, however, that by leaving a highly developed student in a lower-developed setting, you're still holding them back. This is more of a private education issue though, one where people are beholding to no one but those they choose.
I don't get the sense there is an easy answer to account for both issues (focusing on a few to make them real good, or many to make them somewhat good); we're clearly going to have to make concessions somewhere.
That said, I think Dan's view that he's more of a teacher of teachers does a pretty good job of accounting for the disparity. I get the sense he's describing what he perceives to be a systemic problem and his part of remedying that involves teaching those who are in charge of their respective segments of the system...and largely because (I'm guessing somewhat) certain people have asked him to. Otherwise, I presume he'd just be another person training in his own little corner of the world and we would have even less exposure to his take on things.

Quote:

However, it also does not address anything regarding selection bias. If the quality of students resulting is the proposed measure (and this has been his clearly asserted measure for years), but the premise is to take the best 25% that one finds, the problem of the selection bias remains. It may be that the method in question is superior, but you cannot prove it by relative student performance where selection bias is plainly operating.

Proof may simply not be available in any hard way...And as it relates to conversation over the internet, I don't think this will change interactions much.
Speaking as one of the bottom rung of ability, though, I would say I think his teaching method is very good. It's a little more to the point than some of the teaching I've observed (hardly a good sampling, to be fair). It resonated very well with my previous teaching, both of which also seemed more to the point (with respect to physical potency, by the way).
I can only describe a very superficial level of observation, so I try to drop the necessity for concrete answers. I don't know what's "better" and I'm not very interested in proving it. I tend to drop the issue by taking the view that what's better for one isn't better for another and we don't know which will be for which until a little after the fact. Learning is a somewhat sloppy process by its very nature.
You've been given a lot of flack for your use of mechanical models. I like them because they give me interesting/useful ideas to reference. Dan has been given a lot of flack for his opinions on the general state of Aikido. I like them because they give me interesting/useful ideas to reference. That all said, I do wish I saw more conversation in which "we" seemed to try to understand the validity to what the other was saying more than to make the other understand us. I know I'm guilty of it as much as anyone, and perhaps I'm just projecting, but it seems these conversations tend to go in that direction.
Anyhoo...
Take care,sir! And thank you for the thoughtful reply!
Matt